Jim –

Thanks for sharing the article.  Here are some thoughts that might trigger some further discussion:

1. Most of this is not news to people who know about memory research.

2. I suspect a lot of what’s in the article would be found by just asking students what works for them to help them learn.  They probably know quite well when they are paying attention, and when they are beginning to drift, when their studying is helping them learn, and when they are just doing mechanical things that are teaching them very little.  For example, I think many students would say that when they study ten examples of the same rule in a row, their eyes glaze over after the first few and they really aren’t paying much attention to the remaining ones.  This would support what the article says, that shifting back and forth between different kinds of problems is better than studying all of the same kind in a session.

3. I also note that the article fails to point out a major reason for this effect, which is that a big part of solving for something in math or geometry [such as their example of calculating the number of prism faces for a particular shape] is not knowing the formula or how to execute the formula, but knowing which formula to use.  That is something that would be learned only when a variety of different problem types are intermingled.  I’d make a bet that the following would work best: put problems of the same type together until the student knows well how to solve that particular type of problem, and after that begin to intermingle problem types so the student learns to recognize which type requires which solution.

4. Despite what I said in #2 about students often knowing what works best for them, there are some cases where students do not know what is working best.  An example would probably be the “practice test,” which students might say doesn’t help them learn just because they don’t like it and they have not been led to believe a test can be a good learning instrument.  Testing can (a) provide helpful diagnostic information that helps us and the student know what has been learned and what still needs to be learned; (b) help learning, as the article describes; and/or (c) be used for evaluation and judgment, “success” or “failure.”  Unfortunately students often associate it only with the third (unpleasant) use.  This is partly our fault as teachers, and partly the fault of the system. 

5. This leads to a comment that goes well beyond the article.  I’ve often thought it would be wonderful if the teacher role and the evaluator role could be separated.  If the teacher did the teaching and the evaluation took place later on by someone else across the hall, the teacher might be seen more as an ally and less as an enemy.  The students might be willing to tell the teacher what they didn’t know, rather than trying to hide it and trick the teacher into thinking they know it.  Then the teacher and student could work collaboratively to help each student learn what he/she needs to learn.  I experienced a bit of this when our department (Psychology) established a department-wide minimum competency exam for our research methods course that all students had to pass.  It was wonderful to have students asking me to help them learn something!

Walter vom Saal

Psychology Professor Emeritus

From: Teaching Breakfast List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Greenberg, James ([log in to unmask])
Sent: Friday, October 01, 2010 8:20 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Perhaps Something to Share with Our Students? - Posted to TB List by Jim Greenberg

TBers,

With a wee bit of nervousness I post the attached about what we know of good study habits (I’m not an educational psychologist – so be kind with your responses).  If this seems to ring true to those that know more about this subject than I, perhaps we should be sharing these ideas with our students?

Mr. James B. Greenberg
Director Teaching, Learning and Technology Center
Milne Library
SUNY College at Oneonta
Oneonta, New York 13820

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